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Lesser-known serial killers from around the world

When it comes to serial killers, Ted Bundy is a household name. Convicted of killing 33 young women in five states between 1974 and 1978, some investigators say he may be responsible for a total of 100 murders in the U.S.

John Wayne Gacy killed 33 young men and boys between 1972 and 1978 in Illinois, but Bundy and Gacy's crimes, heinous as they were, pale by comparison to others around the world. The following is a short list:

Alexander Nikolayevich Spesivtsev is a Russian man who was accused of killing up to 80 people and cannibalising some of his victims. He was ruled insane by a court and committed to a psychiatric hospital after being apprehended in 1996.

Yang Xinhai was a Chinese serial killer who confessed to committing 65 murders and 23 rapes between 1999 and 2003.

At night, he would enter his victims' homes, and kill all of the occupants with axes, hammers and shovels. He sometimes killed entire families.

Amelia Elizabeth Dyer achieved notoriety as probably the most prolific baby-farm murderer of Victorian England. She is responsible for 100 deaths, but is also suspected in a total of 247 cases.

Dyer was apparently keen to make money from baby-farming, but rather than take in expectant women, she would advertise to adopt or nurse a baby, in return for a substantial one-time payment and adequate clothing for the child. Soon after taking in a child, she murdered them or allowed them to starve.

Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo, of the Soviet Union, was nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, The Red Ripper or The Rostov Ripper. He was convicted of the murders of 53 women and children between 1978 and 1990.

He established a pattern of approaching children, runaways and young vagrants at bus or railway stations, enticing them to a nearby forest or other secluded area and killing them by stabbing and eviscerating the victim with a knife.

Belle Sorenson Gunness was responsible for more than 40 murders over a span of decades, before she died in 1908. Standing five feet and eight inches tall and weighing over 200 pounds, she was a physically strong woman. She killed most of her suitors and boyfriends. She may also have killed both of her husbands and all of her children, on different occasions. Her apparent motives involved collecting life-insurance benefits.

Charles Cullen (born February 22, 1960) is a former nurse and the most prolific serial killer in New Jersey history. Cullen told authorities in December 2003 that he had murdered as many as 45 patients during the 16 years he worked at 10 hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He would administer drug overdoses to patients.

Donald Harvey is an American serial killer who claimed to have murdered 87 people. The official estimates of the number of people he murdered range anywhere from 36 to 57 deaths.

Cyanide and arsenic were his favorite methods of killing people, but he used a variety of different poisons. They were administered through food, injection, or IV.

Gilles de Rais, was a leader in the French army in the 1400s and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He is best known as a prolific serial killer of children.

His confession states that he killed, or ordered to be killed, a great number of children after he sexually assaulted them. The bodies of 40 of his victims were discovered in 1437, but he's suspected of killing around 200 children.

Harold Shipman was an English doctor by profession. He is among the most prolific serial killers in recorded history with 215 murders being positively ascribed to him, although the real number is likely to be higher.

Shipman would administer lethal overdoses of diamorphine, sign patients' death certificates, and then forge medical records indicating they had been in poor health.

Hélène Jégado was a French domestic servant. She is believed to have murdered as many as 36 people with arsenic between 1833 and 1841.

Herman Webster Mudgett, better known under the alias of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was an American serial killer. Holmes opened a hotel in Chicago for the 1893 World's Fair. That's where he killed most of his victims that could number as high as 230.

Holmes selected mostly female victims from among his employees (many of whom were required as a condition of employment to take out life insurance policies for which Holmes would pay the premiums but also be the beneficiary). He also preyed on hotel guests. Many were tortured before being killed. Some were locked in soundproof bedrooms fitted with gas lines that let him asphyxiate them at any time. Some victims were locked in a huge soundproof bank vault near his office where they were left to suffocate .

Karl Denke was a serial killer from Germany. Among three notorious cases of cannibalism in Germany in the 1920s, his is the one with the most victims estimated at 30.

Denke was arrested after attacking a man at his house with an axe. He committed suicide in 1924.

Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos is a Colombian rapist and serial killer. In 1999, he admitted to murder and rape of 140 young boys and is suspected in a total of 300 cases.

Cubillos would rape his victims, cut their throats, and usually dismember their bodies. Investigators said most of the bodies showed signs of torture.

Maria Catherina Swanenburg was a Dutch serial killer. She took care of children and ill people in the poor neighborhood where she lived. She poisoned 27 people with arsenic between 1880 and 1883, but failed in her attempt to kill at least another 50 using the same method.

Alexander Yuryevich Pichushkin, also known as The Chessboard Killer and The Bitsa Park Maniac, is a Russian serial killer. From 1992-2006, he is believed to have killed at least 48 people and up to 61–63 people in southwest Moscow's Bitsa Park, where several of the victims' bodies were found.

Pichushkin primarily targeted elderly homeless men by luring them with vodka. After drinking with them, he would kill them, hitting them on the head with a hammer. He then stuck vodka bottles in their skulls to ensure that they did not survive.

Miyuki Ishikawa was a Japanese midwife and serial killer who is believed to have murdered many infants with the aid of several accomplices throughout the 1940s. It is estimated that her victims numbered between 85 to 169, however the general estimate is 103.

Ishikawa chose to neglect numerous infants, many of whom died as a direct result of this abuse.

Vlad Tepes was the Prince of Wallachia, in Romania, from 1431 to 1476. He was more commonly know as Vlad the Impaler or as Dracula (yes, he was the inspiration of Bram Stoker's novel). It's believed he's responsible for as many as 40,000 deaths.

German stories say than during his rule, which was mainly from 1456 to 1462, Vlad III was known for impaling, torturing, burning, skinning, roasting and boiling people, feeding people the flesh of their friends and relatives, cutting off limbs and drowning. The punishment was given to people who displeased him the most, including thieves, liars and adulterers.

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